▪ “Getting the Cartier Crowd Hooked on Cheap Credit” (Bloomberg): “The company hasn’t said how much it will issue, but it will probably be big … Richemont’s single A+ grade at S&P Global Ratings makes it a natural candidate for the central bank’s 143 billion euro ($176 billion) portfolio … the luxury market has been turbo-charged by a revival in Chinese demand and confidence among U.S. consumers, and this has elevated valuations. ”

▪ “The Trench Coat: An Obsessive, Comprehensive Guide” (The Wall Street Journal): “Despite its more vulgar connotations, the style is rooted in British aristocracy, having been originally developed as a sporting coat for the upper crust. It soared to broader popularity during World War I, when British officers adopted the weatherproofed, double-breasted, oft-belted style (typically in khaki) for use on the front lines … Easily dressed up or down, the trench has unswervingly stayed in fashion—nearly every designer worth his salt has riffed on the theme.”

▪ “What’s Acne Studios Worth?” (The Business of Fashion): “Acne co-founders Jonny Johansson and Mikael Schiller have reportedly been in conversation with the American investment bank for several months now and are likely to launch a formal sale process after the summer … The company could fetch a valuation of €400 million to €500 million in an outright sale — and maybe more if there is competition from multiple bidders. This would imply a valuation multiple of 2 to 2.5 times revenue.”

▪ “A Lesson in American Greatness” (The Economist): “Since [the Refugee Admissions Programme] was launched in 1980 it has had an average quota of 95,000 refugees a year, more than that of any other rich country. America has also tended to take the most forlorn cases. Some were victims of its foreign-policy blunders … Yet this tendency also reflected the values and self-confidence of a country founded by fugitives, which, over the ensuing four centuries, has been relentlessly successful at turning them into productive citizens … For though it is true that refugees represent a bigger upfront cost than other migrants—America spends between $10,000 and $20,000 resettling each one—they repay that in spades. A decade after their arrival, the average income of a refugee family is close to the American average. ”

▪ “Marijuana Is the New Gold for Mining Companies Going to Pot” (Bloomberg): “The number of companies that started in the mining or oil and gas sectors that are now part of Canada’s burgeoning marijuana industry has jumped to more than 40. In all, almost half of the country’s marijuana firms started out in the resource sector before many converted to pot via reverse takeovers and spinoffs.”

▪ “China’s New Frontiers in Dystopian Tech” (The Atlantic): “Quietly and very rapidly, facial recognition has enabled China to become the world’s most advanced surveillance state. A hugely ambitious new government program called the ‘social credit system’ aims to compile unprecedented data sets … for all Chinese citizens. Based on this information, each person could be assigned a numerical score … The goal of the program, as stated in government documents, is to ‘allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.’”

▪ “Why Isn’t Wall Street Freaking Out About Trump?” (Politico): “To Wall Street pros, the story of Trump’s bull market is part luck, part policy and possibly a whole lot of irrational exuberance. When investors look past the daily theater, they mostly love Trump’s embrace of traditional Republican policies. He’s slashed regulations and cut corporate tax rates nearly in half, juicing profits and pumping cash into the economy. And they’ve guessed—correctly so far—that Trump the trade warrior and nuclear saber-rattler would remain mostly a cartoon character with little or no real-world impact.”

▪ “Do Antidepressants Work?” (The New York Times): “… the effectiveness of antidepressants had been overstated, and that the benefit might be limited to far fewer patients than were actually using the drugs … while many studies achieved statistical significance, they failed to achieve clinical significance … The bad news is that even though there were statistically significant differences, the effect sizes were still mostly modest. The benefits also applied only to people who were suffering from major depression, specifically in the short term. In other words, this study provides evidence that when people are found to have acute major depression, treatment with antidepressants works to improve outcomes in the first two months of therapy..”

▪ “Nordstrom’s Biggest Bet Ever” (The Wall Street Journal): “The company’s decision to build in Manhattan’s saturated retail market presents a concerted risk … Male shoppers are particularly sought after as one of the fastest-growing segments in apparel … the company plans to subvert department store tenets … Instead of siloing high fashion away in upper-floor shop-in-shops, Nordstrom will eschew hard partitions, using see-through floor-to-ceiling lengths of industrial chain mail to separate brands. Plans for a storewide liquor license will enable shoppers to roam with a tumbler of single malt from a second-floor bar called Clubhouse. VIP dressing rooms will be available for those who wish to linger, while those in a rush can order goods online … and find them waiting in a dressing room located conveniently near an exit.”

▪ “#deletefacebook” (TechCrunch): “Tools like Facebook were designed to connect us to the world, giving us an almost angelic view of daily happenstance. We replaced the churchyard with the ‘timeline.’ But our efforts failed. We are still as closed, still full of superstition, as we were a hundred years ago. We traded a market square for the Internet but all of the closed-mindedness and cynicism came with it. We still disparage the outsider, we still rant against invisible enemies, and we still keep our friends close and fear what lies beyond our door. Only now we have the whole world on which to reflect our terror.”

▪ “The Surprising Sweetness of Menswear Reddit” (Racked): “… a lack of style expertise is what makes MFA tick: if everyone already knew how to dress, there’d be no one to, y’know, advise. It’s also what gives the community its trademark niceness — a subreddit that’s all about people asking for help inherently rewards vulnerability.”

▪ “More Families Feel Insecure. That’s Because They Are.” (Slate): “General economic insecurity is worsening because Americans have earned less money over time, and benefits that previously shielded them from shocks … have shifted from government and employers to individuals. People are less able to save and tackle both daily expenses and emergency costs when they come up. The result: People are both anticipating and experiencing hardship up and down the economic ladder.”

▪ “Scrunchies, Scourge of the 1980s, Are Back” (The Wall Street Journal): “Women are wearing scrunchies again—in public, and most notably, to the office, where their presence is producing reactions ranging from unbridled enthusiasm, to jokes that might not be jokes, to silent judgment. Some scrunchie fans wonder if they will be taken seriously while wearing one.”